Tra­cy­locke steps in!

As shop­per mar­ket­ing as a con­cept and prac­tice gains trac­tion in In­dia, we have the lead­ing global shop­per mar­ket­ing agen­cies set­ting foot in the coun­try. The lat­est en­trant in the In­dian shop­per mar­ket­ing ter­rain is Tra­cy­Locke one of the most awarded shop­per mar­ket­ing agen­cies of the world has part­nered with DDB Mudra Group and planted its roots here. We chat up with Pratap Bose, COO, DDB Mudra Group about this ven­ture.

DDB Mu­dra­Max, we knew we had the per­fect fit. We look for­ward to de­liv­er­ing to our clients a unique brand of shop­per mar­ket­ing rel­e­vant to each seg­ment of the In­dian mar­ket. Ad­di­tion­ally, we hope to share pro­pri­etary mar­ket­ing tools that we can take from In­dia to the rest of the world.” Tra­cy­Locke in In­dia will be heav­ily con­cen­trat­ing on the re­tail & shop­per mar­ket­ing side of the story be­cause shop­per mar­ket­ing as a con­cept is rel­a­tively new in the coun­try. “To be­gin with we will con­cen­trate on shop­per in­sights spe­cific to cat­e­gories we work in, be­cause in our view you it is too am­bi­tious to aim to be an ex­pert in ev­ery sin­gle cat­e­gory for shop­per mar­ket­ing.” in­di­cates Pratap. al­ready run a large me­dia op­er­a­tion there­fore con­sumer trends can be de­rived from therein. Fur­ther on we also have a strong im­ple­men­ta­tion team in the form of our rich trade mar­ket­ing arm.” Al­though even with the ex­ist­ing sup­port Tra­cy­Locke in In­dia is plan­ning to have a team of 15 peo­ple ex­clu­sively for shop­per mar­ket­ing. Cur­rently Tra­cy­Locke’s global ros­ter of clients in­clude some lead­ing brands such as HP, T-Mo­bile, Star­bucks, John­son & John­son, Ga­torade, Trop­i­cana, Pep­siCo, Sony and Unilever’s Lip­ton. Tra­cy­Locke In­dia will be man­aged by Pratap, “The en­try of Tra­cy­Locke com­ple­ments the DDB Mu­dra­Max “feet-on-the-street” strengths and given our huge foot­print in In­dia, I be­lieve that the Tra­cy­Locke In­dia model will cer­tainly add huge value to both our global and re­tail brands.” claims Pratap. While this hap­pens we also know that shop­per mar­ket­ing in In­dia is still in its nascence does a ques­tion to ask here would be, is it a vi­able idea to start a shop­per mar­ket­ing agency in th­ese times? To which Pratap says, “Yes! Shop­per mar­ket­ing in In­dia is surely at a nascent stage, there are CMOs who don’t get shop­per mar­ket­ing, there are some who have it as a nig­gling thought but ei­ther doesn’t have the band­width or the con­vic­tion. But then the onus lies on any and all shop­per mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies to make them aware of how will it ben­e­fit their brand. Also In­dia is a coun­try where shop­per mar­ket­ing will be of ut­most im­por­tance due to the var­ied for­mats it has.”